Chapter 14
Fletcher
“Margaux, we need to talk.”
Margaux had her hand around my shoulder and she let it go the moment she heard that.
“About what?” she said.
We both got distracted with the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.
My parents came down together, the way they always did in the mornings — Dad first, Mom right behind him, already talking about something.
Poppy came after them, her hair in two uneven pigtails she had clearly done herself, carrying her trivia book.
They all stopped when they saw my face.
Mom looked at me. Then she looked at Margaux. Then she looked at the note still sitting on the counter by the cookie jar.
“What’s going on?” Dad said.
I picked up the note and handed it to Mom.
She read it. She read it once and then she looked at me, and her eyes asked a question that was much longer than anything she said out loud.
She knew. She didn’t know the specifics but she knew there was a larger story behind four lines of careful handwriting from August, and she was asking me to give it to her.
I looked at Margaux.
“I think you should leave,” I said.
Margaux took a step back. “Sorry?”
“I think it would be best if you packed your things and went home today.”
“Because she left?” Margaux looked around the kitchen.
Mom and Dad were quiet. Poppy had her trivia book open but she was not looking at it.
“Because the flower girl decided to run away in the middle of the night, now I have to leave?” She shook her head.
“Or is it because I’m a vile person? Is that what you think? Is that what you all think?”
Nobody said anything.
Margaux looked at me. Her eyes moved over my face the same way they had on the patio last night, looking for the thing she already suspected.
“Or,” she said, “is it because you’ve been secretly in love with her this whole time?
” Her voice had gone very quiet. “Is that why, Fletcher? Is that what this whole trip has been?” She stepped forward.
“Because if that’s true — if you have been in love with her — then why did you pursue me?
Why did you take me out to all those dinners and make me think that something real was happening between us?
Why did you let me fall in love with you?
” Her voice cracked. “Why? If you love her, why? Don’t you? Don’t you love her?”
The kitchen was very quiet.
“It’s because I don’t love you.” I shouted, the words reverberating in the large kitchen. “And I never will. That’s why.”
Margaux’s face went completely still.
Then she turned and walked out the back door toward the beach.
I went after her.
She was fast. By the time I got through the garden and down to the shoreline she was already fifty feet ahead of me, moving fast along the wet sand, her robe snapping in the wind. I ran.
“Margaux.”
She didn’t stop.
“Margaux, wait.”
She stopped.
She turned around and her face was wet and I couldn’t tell if it was the ocean or crying and it didn’t matter either way.
“Just let me go,” she said. “Just leave me alone. You all hate me. You’ve hated me since I got here.”
“Nobody hates you.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I said.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for shouting at you in front of my family. That was wrong of me and I’m sorry.”
She looked at the water. Her arms were crossed over her chest.
“Margaux.” I waited until she looked at me.
“The truth is, I don’t love you. And I have tried.
I have genuinely, honestly tried. I’ve been trying since the second month.
But I can’t make myself feel something that isn’t there, and the longer I stay, the more unfair it is to you.
You deserve someone who doesn’t have to try. You deserve someone who just does.”
She was quiet for a long time.
“Is it her?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
I let the silence do it.
She looked at me. She nodded once, slowly, her jaw tight.
“I won’t lose,” she said. “I never lose, Fletcher. I will make sure she pays for—”
“Margaux.” My voice was calm. Completely calm.
“Stop. Please stop making this about winning. My not loving you has nothing to do with her. Even if August had never existed, I don’t think I could have loved you.
We are too different. We want different things.
We see the world differently.” I paused.
“But I know — I genuinely believe — that there is someone out there who is exactly right for you. Who will love the things about you that I didn’t know how to love.
And on the day you find that person, none of this will feel like losing.
It will feel like it was supposed to happen exactly this way. ”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Whatever you feel for me,” I said. “It’s not real love either. You know that. Real love doesn’t feel like keeping score.”
She looked at the ocean. She stood there for a while with the wind moving her hair around and the waves coming in and going out.
Then she walked toward me and put her arms around me and cried.
I held her.
“I’ll pack my bags,” she said.
“Please stay for breakfast. I’ll drop you home after that.”
She nodded against my shoulder. We stood there for another minute. Then she pulled back and looked at me once, and walked back up to the house.
After breakfast I dropped Margaux to her aunt’s place a few towns over. When I returned to the estate, the whole house had an eerie calmness to it.
I poured myself some coffee and went to the patio.
The ocean was bright and calm, in complete contrast with my state of mind.
I sat in one of the chairs and looked at it and thought about August. Maybe she was sitting in her van somewhere in Millhaven, going through the motions of a Saturday market, arranging flowers lightest to darkest, hating me with every ounce of her existence.
She had heard me call her a nobody.
She had packed her bags in the middle of the night and walked out of this house alone, and she had been so careful about it — the made bed, the notes, the back stairs — because she was August and she did not want to inconvenience anyone even when she was the one who was broken.
I deserved every second of how I felt right now.
The patio door opened behind me.
Dad came out with his coffee and looked at me and looked at the empty chair next to mine.
“May I?”
“Of course.”
He sat down and looked at the ocean. He was quiet for a while, which was one of the things I had always valued about my father — he had never been someone who rushed straight to the point when he could sit with you first.
“You shouldn’t have shouted at Margaux,” he said. “In front of us.”
“I know. I apologized.”
“Good.” He nodded. He sipped his coffee. “Did you end it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not surprised.” He looked at the water. “Your mother and I saw it coming. We hoped it would come sooner than it did.” He paused. “We were worried it would come so late that Margaux would be truly broken.” Another pause. “And that you would lose August forever.”
I looked at him.
He was watching the ocean, his coffee in both hands, perfectly relaxed.
“We all know you love her, Fletcher,” he said.
“We have all known for a very long time. It’s in everything about you when she’s in the room.
It’s in how you listen when she talks and how you watch the door when she’s not back yet and how you laugh when she laughs, three seconds later, like an echo.
” He turned to look at me. “You love that girl. Every atom of you does. What I don’t understand is why you’re punishing yourself for it. ”
I looked at my coffee.
“Something happened,” Dad said. “During that acquisition. The big one, six years ago. I’ve tried to ask you about it. You’ve always changed the subject. Every time.” He set his mug down on the armrest. “I’m not changing the subject today. What happened?”
The ocean kept going. A bird went across the sky.
“I killed someone,” I said.
Dad was quiet.
“Not directly.” I kept looking at the water.
“The acquisition. I was advised against the acquisition before we closed. The projections said it was viable but two of the senior partners told me it was too fast, that we needed another quarter to assess the impact on the employees. I overruled them. I wanted the deal. I wanted it because I wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted you to put your hand on my shoulder and say that’s my son and I got that.
You did that. And three days later the company went under and three hundred and twelve people lost their jobs.
” I stopped. I started again. “Six months after the deal closed, a journalist called me. She told me about a man. Paul Greer. He had been with the company for fifteen years. He had a wife and three kids and a mortgage and no savings because his pension had been absorbed into the acquisition. He spent two months trying to find work. He didn’t find any. And then he took his life.”
Dad said nothing.
“I never told you,” I said. “I never told anyone. Because I knew what you would say and I knew you would be able to sleep after you said it and I have not been able to sleep for six years.”
I finally looked at him.
His eyes were wet.
I had never seen my father’s eyes wet before. Not fully. Not like this.
Dad put his hand over his eyes for a moment. Then he lowered it.
“You were twenty-six years old,” he said.
“I was old enough to know what I was signing.”
“You were twenty-six.” His voice was firm but not hard.
“You made a decision that went wrong. A decision I encouraged. A decision that came from a culture inside that company that I built — the culture of close the deal, don’t look back.
I built that. You grew up in it.” He shook his head.
“If we are handing out blame today, the line starts with me.”
“Dad—”
“No.” He put his hand on my arm. “Listen to me. What happened to that man was a tragedy. A real one. And the pain his family has lived with is real. But you have been carrying this alone for six years and punishing yourself in every way a person can, and the one thing you have not done is forgive yourself.” He squeezed my arm.
“It’s time, Fletcher. It is really, truly time. ”
I looked at the ocean.
“Did you start an anonymous trust for the Geer family?” Dad asked.
I looked at him. “How do you know about that?”
“I had our accounts audited recently. Went deeper than usual. I recognized the structure of it.” He looked at me steadily. “Is it for them?”
“Yes.”
He put his coffee down and pulled me into a hug. The kind he hadn’t given me since I was maybe fourteen years old. Both arms, full and solid, the way Douglas Calloway hugged people when he meant it down to the bone.
He held on.
I let him.
When he let go he looked at me. His eyes were still wet. He did not wipe them.
“I am so proud of you,” he said. “Do you understand me? Not the deal. Not the acquisition. You. This.” He gestured between us.
“The man who couldn’t sleep. The man who built something for those children.
The man who has been carrying this alone because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else having to carry it with him.
” He shook his head. “That is not a monster, Fletcher. That is the opposite of one.”
I looked at my hands.
“Stop punishing yourself,” he said. “And stop punishing August for loving you.”
I looked up.
He was almost smiling. That small, tucked-away Calloway smile.
“You think she doesn’t love you?” He picked his coffee back up. “Fletcher. A blind man could see it. Even a stranger could be in the same room as that girl and know she loves you. It is in every single thing about her when you are there.”
I thought about August trimming the stem of the dahlia on the windowsill so it would last longer.
“I said something about her to Margaux, just to diffuse a situation. Something I’m surprised could even escape my lips,” I said. “And she heard me.”
“She heard me call her a nobody, Dad.”
“Maybe she did.”
“She’s going to hate me.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe she is sitting in that van of hers right now waiting for you to be brave enough to explain yourself.” He stood up. He picked up both coffee mugs. “I think you’ve not been brave long enough, son.” He looked at me. “It’s time to change that.”
He went inside.
I sat on the patio alone for another minute.
The ocean kept going. It always kept going.
I stood up.
***